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SantaFefan · Posted: Sun Jan 11, 2009 8:07 pm Post subject: VHS tapes..

I want to transfer my US Steam video collection over to DVD so I bought one of those DVD/VHS machines.
What I'd like to know is, how does the machine know that a tape is copy protected?
Some tapes copy ok but others produce a "noise bar" across the bottom of the picture, rendering the copy useless.
Does anybody know if there is a way around this hassle?
I wondered if I took the tape reels out of the original casette case and placed into a normal case whether this would work?
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Helen May · Joined: 10 Dec 2006 Posts: 19382 Location: Cheshire

Sorry I've never had that happen when I've copied tapes.

H
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Rachel · Guest

Santa, the noise bar is striped in with the video when it is produced but is only apparent when you try to copy the tape. It's a security feature to prevent pirate copies from being made. The noise bar is less affected by the attenuation of the video signal during the copying process so it appears on the copy as much "louder" signal. From what I can remember about it ( I'm going back to my TV days of the 90s - there's very little you can do. Crying or Very sad

SantaFefan · Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2009 9:09 am Post subject:

Thanks Rachel.. I didn't realise "it" was actually on the tape itself. I was hoping there would be some kind of foil tape on the inside of the case or something Sad

_________________
Johnnie Walker read out my message on Pirate Radio! Very Happy

13/8/07
I have heard how radio should be.

Rachel · Guest

yep it's on the tape. If you had some really top flight lab kit- balanced lines, a spectrum analyser and some hand tuned band-pass filters you might just be able to filter some of it out but the end result would be a poor copy.
What you could do is play the tape onto a big screen Plasma or LCD in a dark room then record it onto a digital video camera, you can plug the audio straight into the camera- so you don't lose any sound quality, then transfer it to DVD- that should be quite watchable- we did that with some old cine films ( no sound)- it worked really well.